Gram Games hosts 22% Project Workshop to encourage more women to get into games

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On Saturday, May 20th Gram Games hosted the first 22% Project Workshop at its new London studio to encourage more women to enter the games industry.

The 22% Project aims to"help break down the barriers and biases found in the gaming industry for women".

It's based on figures from the IGDA’s annual Developer Satisfaction Survey for 2016 which found that despite nearly half of gamers being women (48%), only 22% of people in the games industry are women.

The workshop was for women looking to get into the industry, as well as those that are already in it to find out more about the sector and share their learnings.

Speaking up

Gram staff and other industry figures were on hand to host workshops on game development, game design, art and user acquisition.

The panel discussed various issues facing the sector and answered questions on how to get into games and what could be done to improve industry diversity.

A similar event was also held at Gram’s Istanbul studio in Turkey.

“The goal of the project is primarily to provide women of all ages - young women, women who want to break into the industry - with the resources, insight, visibility and the network necessary to make a way into the industry,” Gram Games Culture Developer Erin O’Brien told PocketGamer.biz.

“To begin to think about the games industry not as this sector they've kind of always wanted to go into but they didn't really know how, but something that's actually accessible.

“Second is we really want it to be more of a space and community, and a project that allows people to discuss issues to begin to address and change the way the industry looks right now.”

Important step

O’Brien added that she doesn’t want the scheme to be just a Gram Games initiative, but something that the wider industry will push for.

“I think it's important that initiatives like this, like we demonstrated here today, are cross-industry,” she said.

“We're not competing to get the name brand behind the women's initiative or anything like that."

Gram Games plans to continue the 22% Project with further events in future, which could come as soon as the summer.